New rural identity as emancipation: Freirian reflections on the agroecological social movement in Araponga, Minas Gerais, Brazil

New rural identity as emancipation: Freirian reflections on the agroecological social
movement in Araponga, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Flávia Naves, Universidade Federal de Lavras, Brazil, flanaves@dae.ufla.br
Yuna Fontoura, Fundação Getulio Vargas, Brazil, yuna.fontoura@fgv.br
Steffen Böhm, University of Exeter, UK, S.Boehm@exeter.ac.uk
Paper submitted to the 32nd
EGOS Colloquium, Naples, Italy, 2016, Sub-theme 58:
Organizational Practices of Social Movements: The Power of Organizing from Below
“Without a sense of identity, there can be no real struggle”
(Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed)
Introduction
Over time, both resistance to, and support for, large agribusinesses from civil society
actors have increased in Brazilian agriculture (Fontoura, 2015). On the resistance side,
agroecology has consolidated itself in the country as social movement as the most effective
opposition against agribusiness, which has been dominant in Brazil since the adoption of the
practices of the Green Revolution (Delgado, 2008). Going explicitly against the capital-
intensive practices introduced by this model, agroecology turns to intensive knowledge,
mostly directed at small farmers and highly diversified areas. At the same time, it emphasizes
the ability of local communities to promote grassroots innovation through research carried
and transmitted ‘from farmer to farmer’ (Holt-Giménez and Altieri, 2013). But how exactly is
this happening on the ground? How has agroecology become one of the most vocal social
movements in Brazil over the past few decades? And how has the agroecological movement
crafted a common identity and passed on its knowledge from generation to generation as well
as across different localities in Brazil? To investigate these questions, this paper offers a range
of historical reflections on the formation process of the movement in the municipality of
Araponga, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

We draw our historical analysis of the movement’s formation phase in Araponga
based on the studies of Paulo Freire, the well-known Brazilian educator and author of the
celebrated Pedagogia do Oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) amongst other contributions
towards the development of a critical dimension in education. By doing so, we develop the
historical reflections on the movement from Freire’s emancipatory education theoretical
background that stresses self-organization through collective experiences, the learning process
that enables the strengthening of the autonomy of action, the dependence relationship within
the process of investigation and the mechanisms of oppression involved (Freire, 1970, 1982).
With this paper we aim to contribute to the organization studies (OS) literature on
resistance, social movements and civil society organizations. Recent studies on these themes
in OS have stressed that not all social movements are the same and struggles are fragmented
and can be articulated in an array of different discourses, practices and strategies (Parker,
2002; Sutherland et al, 2014; Misoczky and Moraes, 2011; Van Bommel and Spicer, 2011;
McAdam and Boudet, 2012). However, there is considerable lack in OS in understanding
rural social movements, particularly those situated in the Global South. There is also a focus
prevalent in OS that sees resistance, either formal or informal, largely within formal, often
corporate organizations (Spicer & Böhm, 2007). There is also an implicit assumption that
resistance that is not organized by formal groups and institutions is mostly short-term. Finally,
there is considerable lack in OS studying how grassroots resistance movements build, over
time, viable alternative organizations that are able to build sustainable livelihoods and
identities.
The paper aims to analyze an empirical case that might provide some answers to the
above questions, filling some of the research gaps in OS. It structured as follows: first, we
will introduce the agroecology movement and its assumptions and practices; then we will
discuss Paulo Freire’s approach to emancipatory education; then the methodology will be
discussed before we provide a detailed case description and analysis of the agroecological
movement in Araponga, Minas Gerais, Brazil. We will close the paper with some final,
Freirian reflections about education, agroecology and grassroots resistance movements.

Agroecology and its meanings
Although they have gained more prominence over the past few years, the ideas of
agroecology are everything but new and its practices ‘are as old as agriculture itself’ (Luzzi,
2001).
Agroecology is very knowledge-intensive, participatory, organised and innovative,
and implies farming methods based on diversification, biological interactions and
agroecosystem synergies which generate and enhance soil fertility, productivity and
crop resilience. In addition to its emphasis on sustaining the environment and social
inclusion through participatory frameworks, agroecology-based models have produced
impressive economic results in terms of yields, productivity and efficiency. (Mckay,
2012, p.5)
The term ‘agroecology’ has been used with different meanings around the world
(Almeida, 2003) and the three most common ways refer to agroecology as: science,
movement, and agricultural practice (Wezel et al., 2009). Some researchers defend
agroecology as a science that seeks to understand the internal operation of agricultural
systems, which includes the central role of the human being (Altieri, 1995; Gliessman, 2007).
On the other hand, some approaches in agroecology as science (2000s) turn beyond the field
of agro-ecosystems and vision to a broader focus on global food system of production,
distribution and food consumption (Wezel et al., 2009). For agroecology practitioners (such
as farmers, peasants, co-ops, NGOs and others), agroecology relates to a method of
cultivation which focus on agro-ecosystem management and non-use of external inputs (Holt-
Giménez and Altieri, 2013).
Consequently, this is seen as a barrier to the technologies introduced from the so-
called ‘Green Revolution’ highly based on agricultural biotechnology practice (Sauer, 2008;
Delgado, 2008). The debate on agroecology strengthened in the 1970s, fundamentally in
opposition to the established conservative agricultural model. According to Bauer and
Mesquita (2008, p. 29), the Green Revolution “introduced a new social reality into the
universe of family farming, with the replacement of the traditional knowledge for a scientific
and instrumental one”.
Resisting the Green Revolution and its capital-intensive practices, agroecology turns
to intensive knowledge, directed at small-scale farmers and highly diversified areas. It
emphasizes the ability of local communities to promote grassroots innovation through field
research carried and transmitted ‘from farmer to farmer’ (Rosset et al, 2011; Holt-Giménez;

Altieri, 2013). This promotion of the engagement of farmers and other people involved in
farming goes beyond the understanding of the agriculture knowledge for a specific land,
ecosystem and type of production. That is, agroecology does not only concern to some
technical proposal to be adopted by farmers, but it also refers to a political proposition as it
transcends the operational aspects and questions that lies in the current productivist logic of
hegemonic of power in rural areas (Guzman et al, 2000). In other words, changes in the
balance of power among technicians, farmers, nature, public institutions and market seem to
be the basis of the development of agroecological experience, not only as a goal to be
achieved, but as a condition for its development (Holt-Giménez and Altieri, 2013).
In the early 1980s, agroecology became more consolidated because of the growing
interest of society in environmental issues. Since then, agroecology has been advocated in two
central ways: 1) a way of protecting natural resources, b) as a roadmap to design and manage
sustainable agro-ecosystems by linking sustainability and agriculture (Altieri, 1995). Also in
the early 1980s, hundreds of NGOs in Africa, Latin America and Asia started to promote
thousands of agroecology projects. These projects incorporated traditional knowledge to
modern practices of agroecological science (Pretty, 1995; Altieri et al, 1998; Uphoff, 2002).
After the financial and food crisis of 2008, agroecological practices have become recognized
worldwide, as intensive agriculture is increasingly seen as playing an immense role in land
and livelihood degradation, climate change and other global environmental and social
challenges (Holt-Giménez, 2002; De Schutter, 2010).
Furthermore, in the 1990s, especially in the U.S. and in Latin America, the term
agroecology turned to describe a movement, to express a new way of practicing agriculture
and its relations with society. Currently there are different social movements that share a view
of agroecology (Wezel et al., 2009). The expansion of agroecology in Latin America as a
farmer and indigenous resistance movement produced technological, cognitive and socio-
political innovations that have been related to the new political scenarios in Ecuador, Bolivia
and Brazil (Ruiz-Rosado, 2006), while recognizing that they have been rapidly changing
recently.
It is important to point out that, in Brazil and in other Latin American countries,
grassroots movements in agriculture have focused on the claims of ‘food sovereignty’ and
‘the autonomy of local people’ in order to resist the rapid advance of agribusiness. In Brazil,
such movements are considered extremely strong, as is the case in the states of Rio Grande do
Sul, Paraná and Santa Catarina, (Caporal and Morales Hernandez, 2004). In the 2000s, the
international social movement La Via Campesina started a strong presence in Brazil. The

movement is now the largest international social movement in agriculture (The Guardian,
2013). In Rome, 2008, La Via Campesina signed a statement highlighting agroecology as the
solution to small farmers to tackle food crisis (Martinez-Torres and Rosset, 2010). These new
developments suggest that the international call for food sovereignty is beginning to take root
in networks of agroecology of small producers too. Therefore, agroecological local networks
merge with international agricultural movements, such as La Via Campesina, which increases
the social pressure for both food sovereignty and agroecology in global agri-food system. This
is of big relevance since most peasants and small-scale farmers practice “low-resource”
agriculture, based mainly on the use of little to no use of fertilizers, local resources and
traditional seeds (Holt-Giménez and Altieri, 2013). Additionally, in many countries, small-
scale farmers represent the very large share of the poorest in the population (IFAD, 2010).
Amongst the poorest there is a growing resistance to the agrarian capitalist
development through the agroecological movement worldwide, more specifically, in poor and
development countries. Turning the focus from this type of development to the very peasant
highlights that:
agroecologists, whether farmers or scientists, are working together to defend rural
communities and agroecological cultures against the negative impacts of capitalist
industrialization. If the science of agroecology is separated from the agrarian social
thought and movements with which it has grown up, we would argue that its
transformative potential will be lost and agroecology will become just another
instrumental discipline in the continuing saga of capitalism’s struggle to overcome its
own internal contradictions. (Guzmán and Woodgate, 2013: 42).
Bernstein (2014) also acknowledges the plural demands of agroecology as social
movement, which avoids any generalization of being co-opted to large multinational
companies or not. The author highlights (2014: 1057):
Such resistance is typically socially heterogeneous, involving multi-class movements,
whose assessment always requires a ‘concrete analysis of a concrete situation’ rather
than the (‘veriﬁcationist’) accumulation and celebration of the ‘emblematic instance’
counts here, as always, is trying to grasp the social dynamics and contradictions that
generate such movements and that pervade them”.
All these different positions around agroecology stress the relevance of unveiling
agroecology movement’s ways of crafting collective identity in Brazil and in global agri-food
system field of struggle. Before we discuss the case of the emergence of the agroecological
movement in Araponga, Minas Gerais, Brazil, let us introduce the work of Paulo Freire, one

of the most influential Brazilian thinkers on education, social struggle and emancipation,
whose educational approaches and practices have played an influential role in the Brazilian
agroecological movement.
Freire’s emancipatory education in the agroecological movement
Paulo Freire (1921-1997) was one of the most important and influential Brazilian
philosophers and pedagogues (Gadotti & Torres, 2009). He was deeply concerned with
critiquing modes of education and pedagogy that reproduce domination, oppression and
cultural exploitation. Dominant, often Eurocentric educational regimes, produce, in his eyes
(Freire, 1970), a dehuman Other that is only recognized as the recipient of information:
Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the
result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn
dehumanizes the oppressed. (Freire, 1970, p. 44)
Colonisation for sure is about military, economic and political might, but it is also
about cultural oppression, where the colonizer seeks to impose their own ‘progressive’ forms
of knowledge and understanding (Moraes & Antunes, 2011). The result is that local,
indigenous, colonized cultures begin to be not only denied, but the oppressed begin to not
recognize themselves anymore. A sense of identity is lost:
The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his
guidelines, are fearful of freedom.” (Freire, 1970, p. 47)
Freire (1970) hence advocated a process of unlearning oppression; a process of
relearning freedom to know, freedom to learn and freedom to be yourself without being told
by the oppressor of what to think, know and feel. This is a process of what he (1970) called
‘critical consciousness’, which is an act of self-learning, de-colonisation (Cardozo, 2012) and
self-organising amongst communities of the oppressed. Most importantly, this is not
something that comes through an act of charity, the oppressor’s guilt-driven, missionary way
of loving the Other, fuelled by self-interest and mirror-faced identification:
...the fact that certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their
struggle for liberation, thus moving from one pole of the contradiction to the other...
Theirs is a fundamental role, and has been throughout the history of this struggle. It

happens, however, that as they cease to be exploiters or indifferent spectators or
simply the heirs of exploitation and move to the side of the exploited, they almost
always bring with them the marks of their origin: their prejudices and their
deformations, which include a lack of confidence in the people's ability to think, to
want, and to know. Accordingly, these adherents to the people's cause constantly run
the risk of falling into a type of generosity as malefic as that of the oppressors. The
generosity of the oppressors is nourished by an unjust order, which must be
maintained in order to justify that generosity. Our converts, on the other hand, truly
desire to transform the unjust order; but because of their background they believe that
they must be the executors of the transformation. They talk about the people, but they
do not trust them; and trusting the people is the indispensable precondition for
revolutionary change. A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the
people, which engages him in their struggle, than by a thousand actions in their favor
without that trust. (Freire, 1970, p. 60)
In the context of dominant agricultural practice, there has been little trust in the
people, particularly peasants and smallholder farmers. Instead, the so-called ‘green
revolution’ has been mostly about importing Western, Eurocentric techniques of working the
land, establishing dependency structures on non-indigenous knowledge, capital and
technologies, favouring multinational agri-businesses (Fontoura et al., 2016).
A Freirian approach to peasant agriculture is hence about developing strategies of
mobilization, education, and self-organization that redefine the self-identity of the peasantry
and smallholder farmers and their relationship to, and understanding of, social, economic and
cultural relations in their locality. A grassroots, rural pedagogy of liberation is about
developing a critical consciousness, enabling the oppressed peasantry and often landless to
reflect upon their own rural reality, empowering and self-organising themselves to transform
that very reality (Freire, 1970).
In the context of Brazilian agrarian matters, this has precisely been the approach taken
by the influential Movement of Landless Workers (MST):
the MST places education at the center of the debate, understanding that the struggle
for land is also an historical struggle over education. To conceive of an agrarian
reform project implies taking sides in the struggle for hegemony between opposing
projects and in the battle of ideas. Thus, the MST posits a durable link between

resistance, education and politics, as the central pathway toward breaking the
metaphorical enclosures of latifúndio and knowledge. (Barbosa, 2016, p. 8)
For the MST, agroecological education has been at the forefront of their rural
mobilization strategy, aiming to produce food sovereignty rather than reproduce dependency
that is associated with the dominant agri-business model of the ‘green revolution’. Rather than
training peasants, landless farmers and their children in “virtues of high technology and
resource intensive production”, which reproduces what Freire (1970) called a ‘banking
model’ of education. Instead, the MST’s “focus is on using a Freirean dialogic approach that
synthesizes academic and peasant knowledge systems. Through these dialogic encounters,
students work to understand the cultural and political economic forces behind a farmers’
production system” (Meek & Tarlau, 2016, p. 249) as well as non-intensive, indigenous and
agroecological methods of farming that are in line with local crop varieties, knowledges and
cultural systems.
In 2005, La Via Campesina established the Paulo Freire Latin American Institute of
Agroecology (IALA-PF) in Venezuela, the first international peasant university, where the
“daughters and sons of peasants and indigenous people are trained to be the future of leaders
and cadre of their organizations, with political organizing and agroecological skills” (McCune
et al, 2014: 33). The idea behind this initiate was to gradually but firmly establish a
pedagogical and political thought committed to the social dynamics of the rural and popular
struggle. The IALA-PF first class had students from the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST,
Brazil), the Ezequiel Zamora National Campesino Front (FNCEZ, Venezuela), the
Organization of Struggle for the Land (OLT, Paraguay), the Rural Workers’ Association
(ATC, Nicaragua), and others (McCune et al, 2014). So, being part of the agroecological
movement is firmly seen as an educational process. In this sense, to name this university
Paulo Freire is very representative of the importance of seeing “the political nature of
education” and “the educability of the political act” (Rossi, 2013: 75).
A Freirian approach to agroecological education is hence about creating spaces of
learning and self-organization outside formal, state-driven educational systems. But more than
anything the tools Freire has given us are tools of liberation and freedom; tools that can
liberate the oppressed, whether in a rural setting or not. The purpose of this paper is to study
the historical emergence of such a process of liberation in the case of one specific rural setting
in Minas Gerais in Brazil. Before we present this case, let us introduce our methodological
approach.

Methodology
This study relies on primary and secondary qualitative data (Denzin and Lincoln
2011). In this historical investigation, we seek to trace the stories and experiences of different
actors in the municipality of Araponga, Minas Gerais, Brazil, which attribute meaning to
events in the context of the agroecological movement formation process. Therefore, the
empirical research was carried out by one two of the authors in their stages of data collection
in their doctoral research. In this way, data were collected in two different periods: 1) from
March to April 2004, and 2) from April to May 2005.
We emphasize that the validity of the data collected in 2004 and 2005 lies in the fact
that they show a step of great importance and agroecological movement achievements in the
area of Zona da Mata, Minas Gerais. These data have not been previously examined from the
perspective of OS. Also, as pointed before, it was in the period that the agroecological
experience in Araponga began to gain prominence in the country, for instance, the Brazilian
Association of Agroecology (ABA) was created in 2004. Considering the importance of this
period of the agroecological movement in the country, most of the historical narrative
produced lays on the movement formation process and not exactly on the actors’ lenses of this
same process.
Likewise, our historical analysis is highly based on oral accounts obtained through
semi-structured interviews and secondary sources. From abovementioned period between
2004 and 2005, the interviews were conducted by one of the authors during its PhD. The
interviews were with agroecological farmers; technicians of the Centre of Alternative
Technologies of Zona da Mata (CTA – ZM); union representatives (Union of Rural Workers
– STR); and a university professor who worked as a partner in the experience. In addition to
those who are directly involved in the construction of agroecological experience, six semi-
structured interviews have been conducted in this period in other organizations that are
traditionally involved with the dynamics of agribusiness and government agencies such as
The State Forest Institute (IEF), the Technical Assistance and Rural Expansion Company
(EMATER), as well as the Araponga town hall.
Respondents were selected for their relevance in the process of resistance and
production of a new collective identity in the agroecological experience in Araponga, a
municipality belonging to the micro-region of Zona da Mata, Minas Gerais.

Secondary data included a wide range of academic books and articles, media sources
and ‘grey’ literatures on agroecology in Brazil. Multiple sources of evidence were important
to allow us to better understand the way the movement was organized from the beginning.
As mentioned in the first section, we draw our data analysis inspired by the
educational–political praxis of the Freirian legacy (Freire, 1970, 1982). As pointed by
Barbosa (2013:8):
For many social movements, this critical awareness of education has implied an
understanding of the foundations of the model of modernity in Latin America,
particularly by identifying the educational–pedagogical dimension of how power is
built, as well as the subjective conditions for the expansion of capitalism and how it
has defeated and subjugated lives and cultures.
Therefore, from Freire’s emancipatory education theory, we focused on unveiling the
aspects of self-organization, learning process to the autonomy of action, the dependence
relationship in the beginning of the agroecological movement and the mechanisms of
oppression embedded (Freire, 1970, 1982).
The history of the agroecological social movement in Araponga, Minas Gerais, Brazil
In our research analysis we found that that, the agroecological experience in Araponga, as a
social phenomenon, cannot be understood only as the result of a direct intervention of certain
organizations. It is neither a result of a local arrangement, of the interests of the farmers
themselves or the unplanned, “natural”, consequence of the social relations in this space.
From political, social and economic changes in the country we found out three parts of
the processes of the emergence and strengthening of the movement around the alternative
agriculture and the agroecology in the ‘Zona da Mata’ region of Minas Gerais: a) the
intervention of NGOs linked to these issues; b) the establishment of rural workers’ syndicates
in this region; and c) the social and historical development of the region.
The municipality of Araponga - located between the drainage-basins of the rivers
Doce, Paraiba do Sul and Casca, which presents extremely irregular relief -, has already been,
until the nineteenth century, covered by Atlantic forest and inhabited by indigenous people,
especially by the tribe of the ‘Puris’. Nowadays, the Atlantic forest is reduced to only 7.6% of
the original and indigenous people. Also, like the original local people, the forest was

decimated. In the nineteenth century, the region in which it would be formed the municipality
of Araponga received black slaves who were brought to work in the gold exploitation and,
with the decay of this activity, they began to work on large coffee plantations.
Still in this period, with the transition to free labor and low availability of controllable
paid employees, the coffee production was organized in a way that the farmers offered to
workers partial access to the land exploitation through settlement, sharecropping and, more
recently, with the partnership1
. Thus, landowners held, by the control of this resource, the
power to define the contours of production, and the social and political organization of the
region. This is a mark of the social construction of Araponga.
In the twentieth century, the break-up of farms due to the coffee crisis, sharing goods
and inheritance allowed some settlers and rural workers to have access to small portions of
land, forming the basis of family agriculture in the municipality. In small farms - up to 50
hectares (IBGE, 1996)- the production is diversified, ensuring part of the household
consumption, which represents 85% of total establishments and only 37% in the region.
Medium and large properties represent about 15% of the establishments, occupying 63% of
the area and are dedicated to coffee growing and cattle breeding. These numbers show that
although most of the land is in the hands of large and medium owners, there are a significant
number of small farms that support several families. We must consider that the quality of land
is also different. Large producers occupy areas of easier cultivation, flat, with higher fertility.
Small farmers are in hillside regions, of fragile soils with lower fertility, in transition areas
with the State Forest Preserve of ‘Serra do Brigadeiro’.
The access to land has provided, historically, unequal power between large
landowners on the one hand and family farmers and rural workers on the other. So, from the
twentieth century to the current days, the land access in Araponga constitutes therefore a
dynamic structure of oppression that is not restricted to land ownership only, but involves all
the meanings and possible achievements from the relationship that a farmer and his family
establish with the land. Because of that, in the production context, for example, power
relationship among those actors is also unequal. Farmers are representatives of agribusiness
and, therefore, they use and impose to partners the agricultural model based on monoculture
(coffee) and on the use of agrochemicals, damaging the quantity and quality of products for

1
Held the specificities of each one, these forms of production and life have in common the fact that farmers
deprived of land cultivate in others’ properties and share the results of the crop with the landowners (Dias dos
Santos and Florisbelo, 2004).

self-consumption of families that so demand more products from the market. Likewise, the
relationship of family farmers with the market takes place predominantly on the demand side
since the processing and commercialization of coffee are made by farmers. The extent of that
control goes beyond the productive aspects. The poor infrastructure involving roads, health
centers, transport, for example, meant that in urgent cases - especially in cases of health
problems – the family farmers needed to depend on the goodwill from the owners of the land
to seek medical attention. This situation strengthened the dependence relationship and
patronage, allowing farmers to control also the political demonstrations and positions from
partners and rural workers. Thus, the access to land represents a central control tool and
oppression mechanism that establishes hegemony at the local level by large landowner
farmers, agribusiness representatives. According to Alves (2006, p. 276):
farmers from Araponga build their identity through the image that they make from
themselves and the values they share as opposed to ‘others’- the ‘big ones’. This is due
to the fact that the history of the region, in view of these family farmers, is marked by
the duality ‘violence /resistance’, necessarily represented by two groups - on one side,
the ‘big ones’, the oppressors; on the other side, the ‘small ones’, the victims of the
violence made by the first, but actors of resistance processes.
In 2004, during a research interview, a farmer, president of the Rural Workers
Syndicate of Araponga (STR) pointed out that:
A major cause of poverty is the presence of large farms. Where people depend on
farmers, there is poverty. If you get sick on the farm, you depend on the owner of the
land. São Domingos [a rural community from Araponga] is an example: there, the
staff is more sick and underfed. They only grow coffee and you need to buy
everything outside. You cannot plant a vegetable garden or fruit. And there is no
investment on the farmer’s property. There are people who die on the farm and no one
knows what the cause was. Many times, the family is expelled from the farm and sent
to the peripheries of the city.
This does not mean, however, that family farmers and rural workers do not adopt
strategies of resistance to continue on the land, take care about their families, in order to be
actually farmers.

The strengthening of family and neighborhood ties established mutual aid networks
and space for reflection that formed the basis of the self-organization of family farmers of
Araponga. Many of the local ideas and initiatives emerged from meetings around the Basis
Ecclesial Communities (CEBs)2
, which worked in the region since the late 1970. For many
family farmers and also for the technicians who are at the origin of the agroecological
movement in Araponga, “everything began in the CEBs”. Alves (2006) states that the CEBs
acted as a catalyst for local social processes in Araponga, dialoguing with values, desires and
projects that were already part of the repertoire of family farmers and rural workers from the
region.
These informal initiatives allowed family farmers to organize and implement
resistance initiatives against the control made by large landowners, starting with claims to
ensure the land access. That was their strategy to tackle dependence and poverty – two
directly related aspects, as mentioned by the interviewee:
The conventional [agriculture model established in Araponga] has no future
perspective. There are people who are in the conventional model, as the partner, that
cannot develop the conventional and sees no option to have a better quality of life.
Who has their own land, at least can dream: today I have no money, but I'm not tied to
the boss, I do not use poison, I eat good things, [things] of quality, then the dream, we
see it clear. The dreams of people: I will build a yard, I will get quality for coffee and
through this quality the coffee will have more value and will generate a greater
financial return. (interview with a family farmer, president of STR from Araponga,
2004).
So, in 1977 and 1978, three small scale-farmers, which were brothers, decided to
gather all the available agricultural production, managed to get some money and bought land
that was divided between them. The debts were paid gradually with agricultural products - a
sacrificed process since they needed to recover the land, make investments and ensure good
productivity. However, with this opening act and autonomous of coping, this group of farmers
made possible what seemed to be impossible. On their land, they could make their own
decisions and began to experiment alternative forms of production, according to principles
from the CEBs, as highlighted in 2005 by an agroecological farmer from Araponga, during an

2
CEBs are the axis of work of the Catholic Church through the II Vatican Council, especially among the
“popular” levels in Latin America. The theological principle that guides their practices, called “Liberation
Theology”, seeks to reconcile the Christian faith with an emancipator praxis (ALVES, 2006).

academic interview: “We have never used poison because of the CEBs. They were always
saying to staff what were poisons, why it came to Brazil, because they could no longer sell it
out and wanted to sell here. People involved in this organization have a different
consciousness from others”.
In the 1980s, the possibilities of new partnerships decreased, many farmers allocated
cropland for cattle breeding and intensified the control over the partners’ work, leading to an
increase on the rural exodus. For partner farmers, that model of production and life turned to
be seem as unsustainable, avoiding families to eat in a proper way, to have access to basic
services such as health and education, to invest in the production or do savings. It was
stressed in 2005 by an executive coordinator of the CTA-ZM:
Even because it has changed about the form of partnership that had existed before.
Formerly, people used to plant with partnership, but they could also grow in the fields.
So, they planted coffee, but grew corn, beans, coffee, then, they diversified from the
coffee production. And in latest years, at that time, what was happening? It was
growing cattle breeding, coffee monoculture was growing, … there was no longer
traditional settler, who had labor problems with the farmers. So, the staff begun to
improve the coffee production. Thus, where they used to plant fields, now they had to
plant grass.
At the same time, the workers who remained in the city and adopted productive
practices disseminated by the Green Revolution could not obtain sufficient resources to
support their families, featuring what farmers call as the “impossibility” to live from the land,
as mentioned in 2004 by a syndicalist farmer: “In 1992, we moved to Belo Horizonte. We
sold the land and bought an allotment in Contagem. (...) That happened because we had
planted a lot of coffee, corn, beans and nothing grew”.
In 1987, it was created the non-governmental environmental organization,
environmental NGO, called Alternative Technology Center of ‘Zona da Mata’ (CTA-ZM)
which started to develop projects in Araponga. Although some alternative technologies such
as seed production, green manuring techniques and soil conservation were being implemented
since 1988, there was still much resistance to the work of CTA-ZM, one of the organizations
that sought to expand agroecology in the region and the proposal of Alternative Technologies
Project (PTA) network - main actor in building the agroecological movement in Brazil:

Well, at first, at the beginning, the focus was much more on the alternative
technologies. So we got to work almost with the spread of a package; an alternative
package, which was level curve, compound, covering, grouts. And gradually, we were
feeling the need to... We are spreading miracle cures! Solutions that are general to any
situation but they were not. (...) So, we needed to understand more about the agro-
ecosystems. This was the first step. It was when we came out from this approach of
alternative technology to the agroecology. Because we started from the diagnosis and
make a better analysis of agro-ecosystems and, from this, think about the process of
building alternatives, and so the role of family farmers was also gaining importance as
experimenters, generators of the own solutions. (interview with an executive
coordinator of the CTA-ZM, 2005).
Additionally, as pointed in 2004, by a small-scale farmer from Araponga: “The CTA
did not bring money, but something different, but something that was in the hands of those
who wanted to work. CTA supported what we already thought. We already planted Creole
corn before CTA; when they came to explain, we found what you were looking for”.
This change, experienced in Araponga, has also been incorporated as the basis of the
agroecological movement in Brazil:
So, this effort to build identity from the experience is essential. Without it you do not
build identities. If you get talking in the abstract, people do not identify because they
are very different, and it is good they are. Because respecting cultural, environmental
differences and everything is one of the key things for people to meet with the concept
of agro-ecology. (...) They have their own identity, it is essential to keep it, to grow it,
but at a higher level, they are all family farmers, everyone is thinking about the
prospect of economic viability, they all are concerned about the regeneration of natural
conditions, because future generations depend on nature and family farmers think
about the future generations, they think about the son, grandson. (interview with an
executive director of AS-PTA, 2005).
In 1989, after many struggles and conflicts, it was created the above mentioned, STR,
a rural workers union. The proposals of the union movement at the time, focused on the
conflicts between employers and employees (farmers and rural workers), were not accepted
by the farmers from the municipality, strengthening the non-recognition of the rural worker
identity but the family farmer identity. Issues related to production have always been central

in Araponga and STR building its legitimacy, unlike other unions, defended this perspective,
while dealing with labor disputes, demands for retirement and other rights. In this sense, in
2004, the president of STR from Araponga stressed:
We can cite [the actions that make up the agroecological experience] as innovation,
but suddenly, people had already a potential that, because of encouragement lack, did
not appear. Sometimes, it was missing a push, with someone to help us, like me who
started working in the union without knowing anything... and I had not discovered I
could do something. Our people have a lot of potential that has not yet been
discovered. We had the potential, but to expand the work we needed a little push. As
the non-use of poison, for example, and the chemist, which I did not like to use, but
had no choice and had to use. Hence, when CTA came up with alternatives, we let it
go: I no longer enjoyed that ‘thing’, so now we have a choice, then...
Thus, the resistance of farmers to the strictly technical proposals from CTA-ZM and
STR made these organizations to revise positions and strategies, and make them to approach
to try to assemble and support the needs of family farmers. It was a critical moment, with
great poverty in rural areas, young people leaving the countryside, farmers selling land and
leaving the city. With the support of STR and CTA-ZM, 10 years after the first collective
purchase of land, small-scale farmers who initiated the process and those involved with the
CEBs, decided to extend to others this practice. The process, called “conquest of the land”
involves a group of landless farmers or rural workers organized by solidarity ties (familiar
ship, neighborhood). In the group, they all provide agricultural products (along with loans
from other people) that are sold and used to buy land in cash that is divided among the
participating families. The debt will also be paid in agricultural products, in the same amount,
regardless of the amount in each period.
The collective purchase of land held in 1989, mediated by STR, reflects the
formalization and institutionalization of self-organization experience of family farmers
against the oppression established by large landowners farmers. Alves (2006, p. 271) notes
that “since the beginning of the ‘conquest of the land’, from 1979 until 1989, there was no
documentation about the loans for land purchases, since ‘it was all based on trust’, as many
farmers say”.
Although many rural workers are unable to gather necessary resources or organize
themselves according to the land conquest principles (values also based on CEBs that drives

groups formation for new purchases), the land conquest had managed to settle down, until
2005, 100 families distributing 498 hectares of land.
This process, along with the change in the form of action of CTA-ZM, incorporated
the defense of agroecology and with a union focused on the interests of family farmers
leveraged the family farming in Araponga, which crafted an identity for the agroecological
movement in the region.
The construction of this identity is guided by autonomy. According to reports, many
farmers were frightened at first with the lack of more direct guidance, standards, since they
were used to the Green Revolution’s ‘closed package’ for the agricultural production in all
agriculture scales, as pointed by a technician from CTA-ZM, in 2004:
Are there principles? There are... that you will follow... but people sometimes come
close to wanting the recipe. Then they discover it is not like that and start to walk
away... Hence, we see that it is not about the proposal. Some people get ungrounded,
but soon they find themselves. It is a social thing: we are made up of models... when
you say you can decide how to do, the person gets ungrounded.
This entire process centered on the demands, on the collective learning and on the
active participation of farmers, brought new meanings to the farmers:
I feel different [as a farmer] today than before. In agriculture, before, I was like a blind
man who could not see and now I can see. It seems that cleared the eyes and I keep
studying... I am a student today. Before, I thought I just had to work (interview with a
farmer from Araponga, 2004).
Also, during an interview with a farmer from Araponga who participated in the land conquest
in 2004, he highlighted:
From one year and a half to now, we entered in agroecology. There is already organic
coffee to harvest... the concern about health was a reason for us to come to
agroecology. Today, there is where to produce and to give welfare to the family and
we had a lot of change: small children were always sick, today no more. I do not know
why, but I think it was because of the poison. Before, I had to use all kinds of poison
in the production [he was partner from another producer] and the clothes we take
home, I think, was bad for the child’s health. Now, we do not have to run to the

doctor, the water is good... Before, the land was all without freedom and without
respect to a certain division.
The identity of the agroecological movement of Araponga around the demands of the
strengthening of family farming has as formal mark: the realization of a participatory
diagnosis that aimed to approximate the demands of family farmers and construct meaning for
their actions, STR and CTA-ZM:
The diagnosis has changed the profile, the work of the union and the CTA as well. It
was through the farmers, their interests. It does not matter if someone come and talk:
‘this is the way for the farmer’, if he did not see that way... because he is who is going
to walk the way, he has to realize it as the path. It may be the perfect job, but... It does
not matter to start the job if everybody does not see, observe… (interview with the
president of STR from Araponga, 2004).
The five problems listed by farmers in the diagnosis made in 1993 (1st
– the problem
of the State Forest Preserve of ‘Serra do Brigadeiro’; 2nd
- Weakening of the land; 3rd
- Lack
of land; 4th
- Seeds: Maize and other; 5th
– Health) (FARIA, 1994) and, more specifically, the
fact that they all came to be effectively discussed and addressed jointly by farmers, by the
CTA-ZM and STR, were a mark for the expansion of the movement. The concrete
achievements resulting from the confrontation of these problems, which already informally
occurred (as in the case of land conquest), attach greater legitimacy for farmers, STR and
CTA-ZM, which resulted in changes in the power relations relative to farmers, rural workers
and government representatives.
Between 1996 and 1997, Araponga farmers connected to the CEBs mobilized and
discussed the issue about the education of their children. The idea of urban schools,
disconnected from the rural reality and the family agriculture was considered by them an error
that encouraged the departure of young people from the rural areas and was a barrier
innovation and local development. During this period, also in the state of Minas Gerais, the
construction of the movement of family agricultural schools, influenced by the alternation
pedagogy, from French tradition, and coordinated mainly by the Catholic Church groups
begun. Several family agricultural schools were created in Minas Gerais, in the 1990s, among
them the Popular Agricultural Educational Community in the rural area of the municipality of
Viçosa (an Araponga’s neighbor city), in which most students were from Araponga. The
purpose of this school was to create a teaching-learning environment consistent with the

country life, but, after several conflicts between the parents of the students and representatives
of the Catholic Church, the school was closed in 1998. However, the farmers from Araponga
did not give up on the idea that their children should have access to a quality education,
adequate to their reality.
In 2001, Araponga and other municipalities around ‘Serra do Brigadeiro’ participated
in the creation of the City Plan for Sustainable Rural Development (PMDR) in partnership
with the CTA, some STRs and other public organizations. In this plan, it was raised, among
other things, the demands of family farming in relation to health, agriculture, education,
endorsing the discussion about the creation of an Agricultural Family School in the city. The
discussion about the model of education and the construction of a school in the alternation
pedagogy regime also occurred in preparing the project for implementation of the ‘Serra do
Brigadeiro’ territory, which sought to support in the public policy of fostering territorial
development. Therefore, when at the same year, a new collective purchase of land (land
conquest) was carried out, the farmers who participated in the discussions decided to cut a
piece of the area that would be up to each one and donate small parcels totaling about 2
hectares designed to the construction of the Agricultural Family School. The goal was to use
the school and the education to strengthen the ties of children and youth with the land and
with the rural so that the achievements of that time could be valued, preserved and continued
in the future.
In 2002, the association that coordinated the school from Viçosa (CEPA) was
regularized and transferred to Araponga and was renamed as Puris Agricultural Family
School Association, the same name given to the newly created Agricultural Family School of
Araponga. CEPA, composed by small-scale farmers from Araponga, then began to devote the
necessary requirements to structure and operate the school.
In 2003, it was created the Territory of the ‘Serra do Brigadeiro’ and CEPA sent a
project to raise funds from the Territorial Development Program of ‘Serra do Brigadeiro’ to
build the school head office. Until 2007, no funds had been released and the association
decided to start the school in the house of Mr. Cosme and Ms. Amélia, farmers’ members of
Puris Agricultural Family School Association, which always had involvement with social
movements. They arranged the house, built a temporary space in a community task force,
mobilized families and students, selected tutors, made a team planning, prepared a week of
adaptation and started the school activities on February 11th
, 2008. Later that year, the

construction of the school head office began and in 2010, according to Ferrari (2011), it was
working out in the own head office, with 3 high school classes and 45 students in the
Vocational Technical Course integrated to the high school, with specialization in Agriculture
and emphasis on Agroecology.
Since the beginning of the movement, the market issue was important for family
farmers, which originally characterized a dimension of great dependency and oppression
suffered by them. With higher availability of land, innovations in the production and
diversification, farmers and technicians realized the need to “build” a space in the market for
their products. In 2003, they created the market of the Association of Family Farmers of
Araponga (AFA) or the AFA grocery store that started to receive and commercialize the
products of the farmers involved in the agro-ecological movement. In this space, foods are
sold fresh and some processed, as brown sugar, fruit pulp, flour, all produced without the use
of pesticides. Many of these items, before the experiment, were not even produced and today
they are traded through a structure designed and managed by them, helping to supplement the
family income. The implementation of the AFA market enabled learning about processes
(cost, price, quality control, customer service, etc.), about the relevance of the work done by
family farmers and about their capacity to engage new activities.
In 2005, the AFA discussed how to able the access to the institutional market, so that
farmers could sell their products for school meals of the municipality and region, for example.
This practice was made possible through the national public policy with the Food Acquisition
Program (in Portuguese, PAA).
Initiatives focused on coffee marketing were also prioritized, starting with the
improvement of the product quality (farmers linked to the movement won coffee quality
contests), the pursuit of certification alternatives for organic coffee and partnerships for
processing and commercialization, escaping from large farmers and local middlemen: “Then,
[farmers] have begun to feel bad because they used to keep these farmers under control
through a coffee processing structure, the trade of the coffee and they were losing it”
(interview with an executive coordinator from CTA-ZM, 2005).
Around 2000, the importance of the local agroecological movement coordination with
the public policy began to be outlined. It was the intervention on the implementation of State
Forest Preserve of ‘Serra do Brigadeiro’ and then on the deployment of the Territorial
Development Plan of ‘Serra do Brigadeiro’ that showed the importance of this type of joint.

In 2001, the creation of the Sustainable Rural Development Plan and the City Council for
Sustainable Rural Development contributed to legitimize, consolidate and expand the actions
of the agroecological movement in Araponga region.
Hence, it can be said that it opens a new front of struggle for the agroecological
movement in the region that puts its principles and values beyond the group that supported the
experience and, in turn, they become to constitute the guidelines for the development of the
municipality of Araponga. It does not mean that these principles will be respected and it is
still necessary to fight so they keep viable, as shows the example of Agricultural Family
School (in Portuguese Escola Família Agrícola – EFA), whose project, even approved, took
long time to be implemented due to resistance and bureaucratic obstacles, inclusively from the
own municipality.
At this stage, it also increases the complexity of the relationships, the conflicts and the
demands of dedication and hard work, both for technicians and for family farmers. In addition
to the production that also became more complex, there were courses, qualifications,
experience exchange, political actions, meetings, trips, resource management, school, market,
and others, as pointed by a farmer from Araponga, 2004: “But it is too much work for too few
people. It is not only one thing: school, syndicate, CTA, CEBS, association and the staff do
not have time for everything”.
This reflects the dilemma of growing without losing the connection to the bases, with
the original identity of the agroecological movement, with the demands of family farmers
who supported it. This is one of the controversial issues surrounding this movement that put
in danger their achievements in recent decades. We argue that the appropriation of
agroecology by other organizations representing capitalist interests can distort the original
proposals of the movement, emptying it senses.
The link of agroecology to the market access or the promotion of individual health,
released by the media and the link of the movement’s actions with public policy and
government resources that restrict or create conflicting standards in relation to the
agroecological proposals, make empty the transformer aspect initially proposed by
organizations (Perez-Cassarino, 2012).
Moreover, the pressure for positive financial results for small-scale farmers increases
as the movement progresses. Pressures arise from other farmers, technicians and

representatives of public organizations operating in the region, but also from media sources
(radio and TV):
It always persist doubts in the minds of producers, especially for those who are not
closer to the syndicate work and can give up everything because they heard the voice
and ideas of other neighbors who think differently. So, the syndicate has to do a
constant work with these people to fix the ideas of agroecology. Even so, there is
always waiver (...). The reason is financial. Farmers have been affected by financial
problems for some time, and when we enter the agro-ecology work, we take a punch
in the financial sector - everybody. The difference is going through it conscientiously.
Because those who produce with much fertilizer will take a punch when change, but in
the future, it will be recovered with the land itself that recovers, but they cannot wait.
Hence, he ends up giving up looking at the other neighbors, especially when they hear
the criticism that always come from those who are outside the system. Even with
evidences and experiences that the proposal may work, if it is not working with me,
I'm afraid to continue (interview with a syndicalist farmer, 2004).
Until 2005, the staff of the environmental NGO, CTA-ZM, assessed that most farmers
had achieved advances in basic living conditions (health, food, production, etc.) through
agroecology practices, but few had better financial returns so far. The informal experience of
collective reflection and self-organization is fundamental in overcoming the dependence and
poverty. Dias dos Santos and Florisbelo (2004) state that families living in communities with
small tradition on participation and cooperation face major difficulties to overcome poverty.
According to technicians’ reports, there were also, within the movement itself,
conflicts over the meaning and how to implement agroecology into a single specific
experience. For example, making drastic the pursuit of ecological balance can endanger the
survival of families. To address this dilemma, CTA-ZM and STR – rural workers union -
opted for a more “humanistic” perspective more. That was described by the own technicians
that the emphasis is not only on technical and environmental aspects, but also and mainly, on
the needs and abilities of people who engage in work, returning the process that gave origin
and identity to the agroecological movement:
In 1998, there was the project with fertility recovery with spreaders trees. (...) In two
years, the storehouse was empty and we had to re-evaluate the process. It is time to
eat, to survive and could not talk about chemical fertilizer, it was a sin. And in

function of this analysis, we use the Round-up [herbicide] to finish with the elephant-
grass. We made the control, or we would sink João dos Santos. The commitment to the
future was maintained. At the time of the conflict, it got difficult. The [executive
coordinator from CTA-ZM] said: if I'm messing up, I pull out. Let's give a shower in
the child without throwing the water out. We got to control erosion, reduce inputs and
use of pesticides and, in this case, use the Round-up, which ensured continuity. The
limestone was accepted. It was assumed a way to replenish nutrients. Today Round-up
is not used, but at that time, it was necessary to review the principles, the agroecology
laws: a myth at the time (interview with professor from UFV, an experience partner,
2004).
For us, the internal and external conflicts to the agroecological movement in
Araponga, Brazil, reinforce the idea that even with important achievements, nothing is
guaranteed. The field in which the movement acts, more complete and dynamic, draws
attention to the dilemma faced in the current days (late 2010’s) by this movement that is to
grow and work in new areas with agroecological practices and values, taking advantage of
opportunities that arise, without losing its identity and original entailments with the defense of
family agriculture.
Analysis and Final Reflections
In this article we aimed to study the historical emergence of the agroecological
liberation process in the case of one specific rural setting in Minas Gerais in Brazil.
The historical review of changes in family farming in Araponga brings up the
oppression as a historical process in which several generations of family farmers and rural
workers had their identity defined externally by farmers, large landowners, that defined for
this working group how to produce, how to behave, how to vote etc. The strong dependency
on patronage relationships is a dehumanizing instrument, since it prevents the vocation of the
oppressed to free labour and his statement as people (Freire, 1987).
The wide domination, on several instances, exerted by farmers on rural workers and
family farmers, not only is given through the explicit violence but also through the supposed
favours and benevolence, either by permission to produce at home offering in farm to the
partners either for any transportation or assistance in case of illness etc. Freire (1987) deals

with this aspect as the ‘false generosity of the oppressors’ towards the dominated, in order to
perpetuate the demand of injustice perpetuation.
The objective aspects of domination, set by the concentration of land in the hands of
farmers and control of the means of production happened when the land ‘generously’ was
granted to rural workers in a partnership process, and also subjectively by social relations and
the construction of the ‘impossibility’ to live off the land. It was effectively felt and
internalized by the oppressed. These aspects became a constituent element of these
individuals, even when they seek alternatives outside of rural areas they could not exceed the
limits of life that has been taught to them. Thus, the oppressed experience in this case, is
perpetuated beyond the field. As if they try to look for other forms of life in the urban
environment they cannot meet, hold up or survive.
Overcoming the oppressive relations involves the identification of the oppressed
themselves as such, identifying themselves as a problem, as proposed by the pedagogy of the
oppressed and from there look for the vocation of this oppressed man and try to be more. In
the case of Araponga, this identification took the initiative to build authentic and autonomous
mechanisms, based on family relationships and consolidated friendship to access the land.
When these farmers approach the CTA-ZM (technicians of the Centre of Alternative
Technologies of Zona da Mata) and STR (Union of Rural Workers) they have started a
process of overcoming the oppressive relations, demystifying the power and control exercised
by the oppressors and are in search of building tools and processes that consolidate their
initiative. The identity of the agroecological movement in Araponga, will be built from the
humanized identity of farmers and farm workers. This reflects a process of learning from the
perspective of the pedagogy of the oppressed, which involves not only a change in the
individual farmers, but also in organizations that they approach. The narratives of CTA-ZM
technicians reveal that the initial prospect of work was an “alternative technology package” to
be distributed to farmers. The narratives of the STR’s members show that the proposals
geared exclusively for mediation of labour disputes was denied by farmers, whose identities
were rebuilt. The rural workers, who were afraid to leave the subaltern position and challenge
the established order, deconstructed that identity and built new relationships, new activities,
knowledge, practices and values.
So this intertwines the agroecological movement identity with the identity of family
farmers, built not individually but together, as well as advocates Freire (1987).

As agroecological movement in Araponga consolidates itself, the challenges turned to
be magnified, which also reveals that the roots or branches of oppression are not only on site.
They manifest themselves in relations with the market, one of the most difficult issues faced
by the movement since its beginning, in relations with the government, the education system
(banking education). And all these fronts stand as challenges to be faced in the development
process of critical awareness.
It is important to remember that the pedagogy of the oppressed highlights two key
moments: the first in which the oppressed will unveiling the oppression world and getting
more committed to the ‘praxis’ and to its transformation, and the second moment, in which
the transformed oppressed reality turns to be the pedagogy of men in permanent process of
liberation (Freire, 1987).
Likewise, it is central to consider that all the progress of the oppressed are experienced
as loss of control by the oppressors that are linked to resume it. This implies a dynamic that
not ended in any conquest. The complexity of the oppression scenario legitimized by a history
of colonization and the strong presence of traces of colonialism tends to erase such struggles
and achievements and to maintain the naturalized injustice structure. In this sense, the
movement still faces many challenges and sees questioned internally and externally.
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